


win condition

by goodmorningbeloved



Category: Avengers: Infinity War (2018), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Infinity War spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 12:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14449149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorningbeloved/pseuds/goodmorningbeloved
Summary: There are ashes on his hands and a world on his shoulders.





	win condition

**Author's Note:**

> **INFINITY WAR SPOILERS AHEAD, PLEASE HEED**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> i needed to vent. this.....came out instead?
> 
> filed as "gen" but i admit to always having an underlying stevetony agenda. chose not to archive warnings because i was worried the character death tag might be a spoiler.
> 
> if you're up for discussion, i'm @[goodmorningbeloved](http://goodmorningbeloved.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. come weep with me! :~) :~(
> 
>  **EDIT 4/28:** i was super scrambled about who survived the ending and wrote this without realizing Nebula also had made it and was also trapped on Titan, hence her absence D:

There are ashes on his hands and a world on his shoulders.

It’s hot here. Hotter than Siberia, hotter than Tennessee, hotter even than Afghanistan.

He waits for a very long time. He waits for the specks of ashes on his palm to turn into his own, waits for his end too.

Lifetimes later, he’s still alive.

 _Oh God,_ he thinks, sobbing through his retching,  _oh fucking Christ, I’m still alive._

 

 

Muscle memory dictates that his hand drifts to his side. It’s been shaky--hasn’t been the same for a time now. But it hadn’t shaken when he’d held that phone in the Sanctum.

He finds his wound instead. Like an old friend reacquainted, pain lacerates through the forefront of his mind, and he turns over and retches again.

 _You should have killed me,_ he thinks, selfishly.

Galaxies away, his planet is burning.

 _Home_ , says Steve, a ghost of a ghost.

Their home is burning.

 

 

 

A second thought, this one more selfish and straining across lightyears:  _I need you._

But not even ghosts can hear him here.

 

 

 

 _It's the only way,_  says a voice. He remembers the last look on Strange’s face before he crumbled to dust too, before the wind scattered him with everyone else, because death didn’t discriminate between guilty men and good men and children with aunts praying for them to come home.

 _I want this,_ Yinsen rasps.

 _I don’t want to go_ , Peter weeps.

Blood mats ash to his hand as he staggers to his feet. He is tired, so tired, and the armor, despite its missing pieces, is heavy.

 _Don’t waste it_.  _Don’t waste your life._

 _God_ , is it heavy.

 

 

 

These are the numbers: one in fourteen million, a seven-hundred-millionth percent of a chance. It feels like centuries since zero-point-two-five-percent in a cave.

It’s what he’s spent so long preparing for.

Tony thinks, quietly,  _You should have killed me._

The reactor hums, flickers. When it steadies, he begins to move towards one of the broken plates of armor strewn across the barren landscape and picks it up between trembling fingers.

He has so much work to do.


End file.
